So it’s War! The initial reactions of the Polish opinion-forming weeklies to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to examine the initial reactions of the Polish opinion-forming weeklies to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The selection of titles includes examples from the conservative, centrist and liberal press. Assuming the constructivist notion of reality as discursively constructed, the author, using unstructured qualitative content analysis, strives to answer the following main research questions: How is Polish and Ukrainian society pictured in press materials? Which values are believed to be core for Poles helping Ukrainian refugees, for Polish, Ukrainian and European elites, and for Ukrainian society? Which of them are compromised by internal and external enemies? The author concludes that despite all the ideological differences between the examined weeklies, the general thematic and interpretation frames are very similar. Among them: ‘Poland helps Ukraine and does it efficiently’, ‘refugees from Ukraine deserve our help and compassion’, ‘Ukrainian society is extraordinarily united and patriotic’, ‘there are ‘Putin’s allies among the Polish and European elites and they should be revealed and neutralized’, ‘Poland (and/or Europe) have to change in order to survive’. The main differences are in who is considered to be ‘Putin’s ally’, and what values should be pursued in order to survive the threat.